Scenes From a Marriage

By JAY COCKS

"Mother," said Amy Wels, "don't do that to me."

Marguerite Wels tugged at the bodice of her daughter's bridal gown. "Thank God," she said. "It's better than anything else we've looked at. But it will have to come in here."

Hold the joy for the ceremony. This is just part of a long, tough job. "Amy is such a skinny thing. So flat-chested," Marguerite has explained. "Nothing looked right." So Mother left her Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan and, with daughter in tow, journeyed to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, where she found Kleinfeld's and, at last, a suitable wedding dress.

"I've dragged her all over New York," says Marguerite, as Amy wends her way back to the fitting room. "This is hardest for the mother. I can't wait until she goes back to San Francisco tomorrow. Amy is a sweet kid, but this is a girl who lived on a commune. I never thought I would see the day. This boy has really changed her. Now she wants a fancy wedding dress."

Kleinfeld's, an establishment approximately the size of a private airport, sees a lot of Amys--more, it seems, than ever before. A hundred potential brides drop in every day, and 150 on Saturdays. A staff of 100 brings in samples from a stock of some 800 model bridal gowns, averaging $1,200 in price and topping out around $10,000. "Every girl is special, beautiful," insists Owner Hedda Kleinfeld Schapter. "These are custom dresses for noncustom $ people. How could a career girl come in here wearing Perry Ellis and accept anything less?"

Hedda and her husband Jack accepted more than $10 million in revenue for their store last year, which includes a bridesmaids shop two blocks away to which customers are shuttled by limo. "The bridesmaid is such an underdog," Hedda explains. "We wanted to give her a psychological lift." Bridesmaids everywhere may be brooding over reports that the marriage rate for eligible women ages 15 to 44 has dropped to the lowest level ever recorded: for each 1,000 women, there are fewer than 100 weddings each year. Not even the Kleinfeld's limo can ride over a sobering stat like that.

There is no gloom at Kleinfeld's, however, or anywhere else in the wedding industry. Everyone, in fact, seems downright delirious--from the usual near- frantic nuptial logistics and from unconcealed fiscal rapture. In 1985, according to Bride's magazine, which takes proprietary pride in such things, the industry raked in $10.9 billion (including money spent on gifts and other wedding bounty), up 43% in the past decade. Manhattan's swank Pierre Hotel has seen a 20% increase in its wedding business over the past five years. Many couples are opting for "weekend weddings": multi-event affairs that stretch the ceremonies and attendant celebrations into a three-day party. VIP Fantasy Locations in Marina del Ray, Calif., gets 25 calls a day inquiring about wedding rentals of its 88-ft. yacht, Sundowner. An "Affordable Fantasy" on- board wedding is $5,500, and a "Cloud Nine" prices out at $9,999, which includes the cost of 99 white pigeons sent heavenward at an appropriately celebratory moment. Don't call about next week, though. The ship is booked solid until October.

Priscilla Kidder, owner of the tony Priscilla of Boston bridal shops, is having the biggest year "dollarwise" of all her 45 in business. Phil Weiss, a wedding coordinator from Skokie, Ill., suggests, "Go to downtown Chicago on any given Saturday, and you'll see wedding parties of $15,000 to $40,000 all over the place." Philip Youtie, vice president of the Bridal Marketers Association of America and owner of a large bridal chain with headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, adds it up simply. "There are fewer brides but bigger weddings," he says. "People are bringing that money out of cubbyholes. A mother with holes in her sneakers will pull $1,000 out of her brassiere and say, 'Everything is the best for my daughter.' " Barbara Ferris, 30, whose May 24 Los Angeles wedding to Steven O'Neill was followed by a reception for "300 of our most intimate friends," explains, "When it boils down to a choice between money and friends, you go into debt."

A big blowout is a way of celebrating a statistical victory. If yours is one of a hundred weddings in a thousand, might as well send up a big salute. There are weddings of fantasy (from The Godfather to Dynasty) and of privilege: Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger on April 26, Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg on July 19, and Fergie and Prince Andrew on July 23. They are all fair game for emulation in a democracy where a plastic card can grab you a piece of anyone else's dream and an extra slice of wedding cake. Linda Blackburn, a former catering consultant, and onetime wedding gown Retailer Linda Stuart started a Los Angeles firm offering advice at an average $1,500 a pop on how to get the shebang together, and their consulting business is booming. "It's part of the whole yuppie thing," Blackburn thinks. "Going back to tradition. The Reagan Administration. The economy. Princess Di and Prince Charles."

"Marriage is a fascinating tradition, and it's the only one left that matters," muses Letitia Baldrige, author of several books on etiquette. "A wedding is a beautiful spectator sport. It pleases everybody immensely. And the presents do flow in." She thinks the resurgence of traditional weddings is "a rebellion against rebellion," a reaction to the free-form tribal rites of the Love and Me decades. "There's a hunger for a little bit of formality," observes Judith Martin, who as Miss Manners writes books of spiky social advice. "It's very natural to enjoy tradition, and it was phony and unnatural when people said everything that came before me was wrong." Setting sail in the prevailing wind and recognizing that "a wedding is a wonderful place to establish a good family feud that will last twelve generations." In September, Martin will release a video, Miss Manners' Guide to a Charmingly Correct Wedding.

Since VCRs have become the current wedding present of choice and hence may not be available to some couples until it is too late for Miss Manners' tape to be of any prenuptial planning benefit, some more immediate guidance may be called for. Remember the solemn words of Ted Schmidt, general manager of the socially favored Peter Duchin Orchestras: "For weddings, there are no second takes." All right, then. Action.

| Dressing Up. When Michael Scott Kirshe married Suzanne Patrick on May 24 in Sudbury, Mass., he and his four ushers were suited up in pastel tuxes by Miami Vice for After Six. Scott even gave his ushers Ray-Ban Wayfarers to complete the image. But, of course, no one is much interested in the bridegroom's plumage. This is the bride's day to be resplendent, assuming that the unthinkable has not happened, and her gown has not arrived late. Philip Youtie offers a stirring evocation of the pressures under which he and all his colleagues labor: "The ambulance, he gets there whenever. The man with the funeral car can come late, you'll wait. But miss the wedding . . . arrrgggh!"

Nowadays the bride almost always wears white, no matter how many times she has been down the aisle. Anne Barge of Atlanta, who went into upscale bridal consultancy after designing a gown for former Georgia Governor George Busbee's daughter Beth, notes that satin and silk-satin blends are the most popular fabrics at the moment. "Organza is out, out, out," she says. "But tulle touches are coming back." Priscilla Kidder believes, "The girls went into ivory tones when the dresses their mothers had put away turned ivory from age. But wedding gowns themselves haven't changed. The most popular is still the very full, classic gown of stiff silk-satin."

In Waltham, Mass., at Yolanda's, Proprietor Yolanda Cellucci is shooting for a different market. Along with more traditional items, Yolanda offers a slinky jersey number with a peekaboo keyhole shape cut from below breast to just below the navel. For her own daughter's wedding last January, Yolanda ran up a gown of white leather, python skin, fox, mink, Swakara and gold cloth with a complementing jacket of Russian golden sable. Such an outfit might seem a little . . . well, declamatory, but it was certainly of a piece with the proceedings, whose wintry "theme" was Doctor Zhivago. The bride and bridegroom greeted reception guests from a bejeweled white velvet sleigh custom-made by the bride's father. Cost of the festivities, including a 250- lb. wedding cake shaped into a replica of Red Square: $500,000.

Paying Up. The bride's mother and father shelled out for the Zhivago wingding, but--fretful parents everywhere, take heart--such a practice has become modified of late, especially as couples getting married tend to be a little older and already established. Says Rita Bloom Smith, president of a wedding consultancy firm in Kensington, Md.: "No woman today past 25 is going to let < someone else run that show." Vincent Landano, 28, who married Maria Castellano, 24, in Brooklyn on May 31, dug into his own pocket to pay for the proceedings--including a vase of swimming goldfish to decorate each of the 24 tables at the reception and a couple of bazooka-like armaments that shot periodic showers of confetti and red feathers onto the dance floor. Vincent, a Wall Street broker, explains, "We wanted to do it our way. We did not want to hear from our parents that we should do this or should not do that."

Financial pressures can be formidable for anyone, of course. Free-lance Saxophonist Art Bressler, who has worked a number of weddings in the New York City area, remembers best the one where the bride's father reached into his pocket to pay the bill and came up empty. Later, watching a videotape of their reception, the newlyweds discovered what had happened: they could see the bridegroom's father reaching into the bride's father's pocket and lifting his roll of cash. The debts eventually got paid but, Bressler reports, the marriage lasted only a month.

Chowing Down. Warmer traditions do survive. In the small Mississippi town of Indianola, there were plenty of home-cooked casseroles and ham and turkey platters at the rehearsal dinner before the May 24 wedding of Ann Delinda Thompson and Kenneth Orlando Thomas, both 25. The food was prepared by friends and neighbors and certified good enough to compete with any catered affair. Even the cake was made locally, although it was the kind of extravaganza that looks like an honors project at a baking school: three small cakes surrounded a central four-layer job, with stairways from level to level. "There were little models of people going up to the fountain," Delinda recalls. "It was beautiful."

Such ceremonial splendors are the rage in some big-city precincts too, but simple food--or the illusion of it--is a new ideal from the country wedding to the metropolitan bash. "What people are in touch with is real fresh, friendly and simple food--fresh fruits and veggies, healthy foods nicely prepared," says David Christian, sales director for Gaper's Caterers in Chicago. Notes S. Alexander, catering director of New York City's Plaza hotel: "We had a very elegant wedding in June, where cost was no consideration, and we served a poultry item as the main course. In the past this would have been taboo at a black-tie dinner."

Manhattan Wedding Planner Marcy Blum, who charges a minimum fee of $1,000 for 20 hours of work, arranges weddings in the $10,000-to-$35,000 range. "If someone tells me they have $8,000 to spend," she says, "I tell them to take a picnic." Peggy Leary, who runs a catering business called Ruffles & Flourishes in Boston's blue-collar Charlestown area, reports that the traditional--and pricey--sit-down dinner is being replaced by a cocktail reception that features "heavy hors d'oeuvres." The prospect of a weighty canape is daunting enough, but Stephen Elmont, head of Boston's Creative Gourmet, likes to talk about "food stations. People are in motion. An introvert who doesn't know anybody can feel comfortably occupied watching a chef. Each food station around the reception room creates an environment. The sushi bar. Or the taco bar. Or fettucini Alfredo. There's drama, action in front of the guest."

Down to Basics. All the action can, of course, obscure the spirit that is being consecrated. Big wedding celebrations may have something to do with what Rabbi Murray I. Rothman of West Newton, Mass., calls "a resurgence of family feeling--and I consider the temple an extended family." Michael L. Bradley, executive secretary of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, wonders whether the resurgence "is religious or cultural. I'm inclined to think the catalyst may be cultural." And part of the consumer culture, at that. Many department stores now have computerized bridal registries and, reports Margaret McMillen of Bullocks Wilshire in Los Angeles, "couples are putting everything on the lists. They're not shy at all." Sometimes they even re-register. Lee Rae Ulrich of San Diego married for a second time recently and signed up again because "everything I had was worn out." By the time Kathleen Sconyers Craft and Paul Jernigan Boehmig, both 32, got married on May 31 in an upscale Atlanta suburb, they had already had a linen shower, a household-item shower, a bar shower and a kitchen shower.

Lori Russell and Leif Holliday, both 20, had also been given four showers by the time they were married near Madison, Kans., on June 1, but the showers were organized not by appliance requirements but by groupings of friends. College pals threw one, hometown friends organized another, parents' friends a third, and a fourth was put together for anyone who did not fit the first three groups. Leif and Lori--described by a neighbor as "the kind of girl who used to wear jeans, climb fences and carry rocks in her pockets"--were married outdoors on a working ranch in a small grove of oak trees by a creek. Thinking about the troubled farm economy, Rancher John Wilson looked around and said, "It's a happy thing to see all the cars here and not have it be an auction."

The Rev. William Nelsen said, "God is wherever people are gathered." The couple spoke the traditional vows, and then the gathering of 100 guests quietly sang America the Beautiful. A deer watched from behind a tree. Afterward, while the bride and bridegroom headed off for a reception in the double garage of her parents' home in Eureka, Flower Girl Elizabeth Browning wandered down to the creek and dropped petals from her bouquet into the water, watching the slow current take them away.

"Lori always loved that ranch," her mother said. "I wouldn't have changed a thing," her father said. "The occasion has more meaning if you share it," Lori said. In Kansas that day, the meaning was clear enough. Must have been the country air.

With reporting by Elizabeth L. Bland/New York and Michele Donley/Chicago